THE newest member of Seanad Eireann is a "Northern Prod" and a supporter of the British link, but after that he departs from the stereotype because he's also a leftwinger and long time trade union activist.
The fact that Belfast has a rich and varied labour and trade union tradition has been all but buried under the rubble of the last 25 years. There are people in what tradition who support a united Ireland there are others who do not. Sam McAughtry supports the union with Britain but rejects the label "unionist".
His friend, the Southern Labour Party activist Matt O'Dowd has invented the label "unionite" for people like McAughtry, to distinguish them from the followers of David Trimble and Ian Paisley.
"I have never never voted unionist in my life", McAughtry says.
Born in the loyalist area of Tiger's Bay in north Belfast in 1923, McAughtry left school at 14. He served in the Royal Air Force from 1940 to 1946, emerging with the rank of Flying Officer.
After the war he "bummed around London" and finally joined the Northern Ireland civil service, rising to deputy principal in the Department of Agriculture.
He became a member of the now defunct Northern Ireland Labour Party as a civil servant he was supposed to remain silent at meetings and avoid being overtly political, but he couldn't keep that rule for long.
He is not a member of any political party nowadays although he supports the organisation Labour In Northern Ireland (LINI), which is campaigning to have the British Labour Party run candidates in the North.
McAughtry began a second career with the publication of his first book, The Sinking of the Kenbane Head, about a sea battle in which a brother of his was lost.
Two people who heard a radio interview he did about the book were Maxwell Sweeney, of RTE, who invited him to contribute to Sunday Miscellany, and Douglas Gageby, who asked him to write for The Irish Tines.
A radio "natural", McAughtry achieved almost instant stardom with Sunday Miscellany's large audience. He has now written eight books, including four collections of short stories and a novel called Touch and Go. A keen racegoer, he writes a weekly column for the Irish Field.
He was all Ireland chairman of the Peace Train Organisation, set up in response to bomb attacks on the Belfast Dublin rail line and disbanded in 1995 in what McAughtry calls an act of faith
"I'm happy to be living in the United Kingdom. I want this to be allied with the fact that I'm happier still to be Irish. I have been pressing, with what limited influence I have, for the unionists to come to the table.
"I'm baffled and I cannot understand why they won't sit down with Sinn Fein. There is no reason why they shouldn't."
McAughtry has lived for the past 25 years in Comber, Co Down. He says the inhabitants of the 97 per cent Protestant town have been intrigued by the fact that the Government in the Republic wants someone like McAughtry to come down and say his piece in the Seanad.
"How do we address you when you come back?" said the man at the local petrol pump as McAughtry headed south for the count. McAughtry replied that he might have to be addressed as Your Beatenship But the favourite won by a distance on the day.